A guidance system for a gantry crane is disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Ser. No. 10/298,487, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. The guidance system of that application uses GPS technology to determine the ground position and orientation of a gantry crane, thereby providing directional data useful for automatically or manually driving a vehicle such as a gantry crane to a desired location.
Various load handling systems are known, such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,512,902, 6,266,008, and 6,577,921, and in International Publication No. 98/34127.
A need exists for an improved system and method for utilizing a guided vehicle to handle items in an inventory.